What is the best way to organize work with ideas?

Question

Software and Internet Services

For the past few years I have been working on various projects of my own. Some of them are online projects, and some are offline. In this regard, I constantly have notes, ideas, some contacts and other information. Part of all this turns into specific tasks that I do, and the other half just lies around until better times (for example, ideas for one game that I would like to make)
For all this, I tried a lot of all kinds of organizers, notebooks, I even made organizers from paper... but ultimately decided to write a program. I already completely rewrote it 3 times, each time I used it, I realized that this was not what I needed. And now I am again faced with the fact that I need to change it.
In this regard, I have a question - how do you store your thoughts, ideas, deeds and so on ... how can you organize all this on a flat laptop screen? So that you can record easily and quickly, just search, and in general, so that the program is without bells and whistles ... something simple enough ...
Imagine that there are no restrictions in programming, what kind of software would it be? Need your help and ideas...

Answer 1

I use Evernote. In it I made a special notebook "Ideas". I write everything there. One idea, one note. All records are always with you, because. available from any computer and phone (there is an application for Android and iPhone). I think it's very convenient.

Answer 2

Ideas are best represented as a tree:
- The trunk is the concept focus and basic information.
- Branches are additional information and features.
In principle, this is enough. The simpler the better.
I personally write down my ideas on this principle in a notebook. I just add more "worms" - information about possible errors and gaps.

Answer 3

I answered on a similar topic at http://habrahabr.ru/qa/12403/#answer_53469 - but here everyone has already said the same thing.
In reality, the use of any software for recording, as a rule, rests on the fact that it is faster on paper :) it’s just more inconvenient to store. In reality, the idea always comes down to a diagram (outline the interaction) or an outline (outline the structure). I didn’t see anyone bother with full-fledged text to describe ideas. This means that the ease of working on the screen should be equal to the ease of working with a pencil on paper.
The complexity of the search - IMHO far-fetched problem. Any system has tags or full text search. Such a volume of ideas that the main words or phrases are found in too many options is almost impossible to generate alone - such a volume is achieved by the work of dozens of people. Never heard any complaints.

Answer 4

MindMap or tree editors.

Answer 5

Emacs org-mode + some really visual similarity of vcs at the level of individual records (when and what was added / removed / changed) + synchronization + viewing and adding records on a mobile device.
He himself tried to make something like that and was cut off at the second point.

Answer 6

Quit doing nonsense - write down ideas in a paper notebook, this is the most convenient way, you can write, you can draw.

Answer 7

For myself, on paper. If I think for a long time, then I start making a map in XMind
. I tried to collect ideas in Evernote, but it didn’t work. I use firefox bookmarks as a repository of valuable links

Answer 8

I use OneNote in conjunction with DropBox
, so I always have up-to-date information both at work and at home, and even on iPhone 4 (there is a dropbox program for iPhone for this)

Answer 9

I tried a lot, I once started with a Google notepad while it was there - then it was gone and everything was thrown into one program and into another OneNote and then there were several on the poppy and settled on Evernote.
BUT
there were big notes, and I began to write the idea into the phone, which was not synchronized with anything except my software. the phone changed to Android and I began to look for a solution compatible with the old database - as a result, they are now in catch.com (there is an import cvs export there), but something does not please me.
Then for special sessions of searching for ideas, I began to use conceptdraw mindmap and switched to mindmanager. I was not happy online because they wanted money for non-private cards. as a result, as soon as there were a lot of ideas, chaos ensued.
Of the latest finds to streamline it, workflowy.com - I found it in the comments on Habré and it’s very convenient.
The problem with him is that managing things is bad. Now I'm trying for ifna on the Asana project and a number of other services.